SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/25/2017
6:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “United in Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
2:2b
Message of the
verse: “having been knit together in
love”
We will begin with the first part of what is commonly
called “The Love Chapter,” which is the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians and
look at the first three verses:
“1 If I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries
and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do
not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the
poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits
me nothing.”
I count six times the word “if” is used in these three
verses sensing that the author is really asking a lot of questions that he will
answer as he continues in this chapter. The
chapter is about love and “Fervent love is the necessary balance to a strong
mind,” writes John MacArthur. We have
been discussing having a strong mind in our last few Spiritual Diaries as we
work our way through this second chapter of Paul’s letter to the
Colossians. MacArthur then adds “Christianity
is not mindless enthusiasm, but neither is it lifeless intellectual orthodoxy.” So what we see here is that the Bible is a
book of balance and the balance we are talking about here is love along with
intellectual orthodoxy. I have to say
that I am reading a novel written by Jerry Jenkins entitled “I Saul,” and not
to give too much of the plot away it is about the parchments mentioned in Paul’s
letter to Timothy in the last recorded letter that is found in the Bible
written by Paul. The author uses those
parchments to be kind of an autobiography of Paul’s life from the time he is a
young man until, I suppose to the time right before he will be killed for his
faith, as I really don’t know as I have not finished it yet, but the chapter I
am reading now speaks of the intelligence that Paul shows in the school that he
is in there in Jerusalem. Now we know
his name is also Saul and that he sat at the feet of Gamaliel from the Scriptures
and according to the story Gamaliel was a man who truly wanted to know God
personally, something Paul wanted to do too, but Paul was letting his intellect
get in the way of knowing God in a personal way and as we know he turned into a
very strict Pharisee, and a strict Pharisee had no room for love in his
heart. I think that is what MacArthur is
referring to when he writes about the balance between love and a strong mind. I also think that Paul learned his lesson as
can be seen in that 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.
Paul uses the word “sumbibazo”
which is the Greek word translated “knit together,” and MacArthur states that
this “means to unite, or bring together.
This aorist participle explains the main verb (‘may be encouraged’) by further
defining the strengthened heart as one filled with love. It refers in Ephesians 4:16 and Colossians
2:119 to the various parts that unite to form the human body. Believers share a common life with love as
its basis. All believers possess the
same eternal life, all come to Christ in the same way, and all were placed into
the Body of Christ by the same Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12:11-13). The church’s unity is not organizational, but
organic. Believers are ‘all one in
Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28; cf. Rom. 10:12).”
It just so happens that we will quote from the very
chapter that I am studying in my morning devotions which is John 17, and we
will look at verses 20-23 to show the prayer that Jesus prayed shortly before
He went to the cross, and we will see in these verses that He prayed for unity.
“20 "I do not ask on
behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
21 that they may all be
one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us,
so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "The glory which You have given
Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I
in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that
You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”
MacArthur quotes the late Francis
Schaeffer in his commentary where Schaeffer stated “the final apologetic” to
the world is the unity of the church:
“In John 13 the point was that, if an individual
Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a
right to judge that he is not a Christian.
Here [in John 17:21] Jesus is stating something else which is much more
cutting, much more profound: We cannot
expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims
are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of
the oneness of true Christians.
Now that is frightening.
Should we not feel some emotion at this point?”
My answer to that question
is that yes we should!
2/25/2017 7:20 PM
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